it's time to get above ourselves

Boris Represents You

A racist Prime Minister, a racist Foreign Secretary, a disgraced International Trade Secretary and a pro-capital punishment Brexit Minister. This isn’t a sick joke, this is your government.

Yesterday David Cameron resigned in disgrace having just instigated constitutional and economic crisis. It was expected that you join in the BBC’s reverent tones and the House of Commons applause.

Your new Foreign Secretary has advocated the re-colonisation of Africa:

“The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more… Consider Uganda, pearl of Africa, as an example of the British record. … the British planted coffee and cotton and tobacco, and they were broadly right… If left to their own devices, the natives would rely on nothing but the instant carbohydrate gratification of the plantain. You never saw a place so abounding in bananas: great green barrel-sized bunches, off to be turned into matooke. Though this dish (basically fried banana) was greatly relished by Idi Amin, the colonists correctly saw that the export market was limited… The best fate for Africa would be if the old colonial powers, or their citizens, scrambled once again in her direction; on the understanding that this time they will not be asked to feel guilty.” Boris Johnson: 2002

John Page
2 years ago

Wulls
2 years ago

Boris is a throwback…
He would be an irrelevant, ineffective throwback were he still inconspicuous.
Boy does Theresa know how to throw a loop ball.
Boris now represents the UK abroad. Effectively he is the face of international Britain. An international Britain that has decided to be insular and inward looking.
This may be a master stroke by Theresa……. She may be saying to the world ” this fucknugget dragged us out of Europe, now let him face Europe”
I doubt it.

Sandy W
2 years ago

I think Theresa May has set Boris, Liam and David Davis up to fail. They campaigned for Leave, now they have to negotiate a no-cost free trade deal with the EU that does not include free movement of people. When they can’t deliver, she can blame them, cut them loose and carry on.

Hogboon
2 years ago

Aileen Mitchell Stewart
2 years ago

I’d love to be the proverbial fly when she tries to explain to a meeting of pissed off farmers that they voted to have their EU subsidies taken away. Ditto the fishermen. I think this appointment is brilliant. It used to be claimed that women have no sense of humour. These appointments — Andrea Loathsome having to actually think in joined up for a change, and Boris with his arse glued either to his office chair or a plane seat, using up his energy working instead of shit stirring, and the Brexiteers all basically told, “You made this mess, so now you can clear it up” — prove that notion wrong. With a comic sense like this she ought to do a stand-up routine at the next Tory party conference.

peter patrick glancy campbell
2 years ago

our nation and the world has left god ,…at there pearl , …2017 will be the year of spiritual awakening as the vatican now takes over medugorje and appirition hill film soon to be screened in glasgow , with the 100 year celebrations of fatima and the rapture now happening , and millions ignoring all the supernatural signs world wide , god has already appealed to mankind to repent there ways , but still the masses walk with satan into hell apon earth amen

Dave Kirkcaldy
2 years ago

Almannysbunnet
2 years ago

Mach1
2 years ago

Metro reported Ruth Davidson’s bizarre quips disparaging the withdrawal of, ahem, Johnson. Guess she has some bridges to mend there…
The mainstream media, and the BBC in particular, has reported May’s emergence as PM as if it were a coronation (which to some extent it is, an undemocratic process meant to protect the established order).
From afar, the signs of general panic in the Tory government are plain to see. The Bank of England desperately trying to spin a stabilising, business-as-usual line, and May trying to bring together her divided party by giving her rightwing opponent more than enough rope to hang themselves.
Whatever Boris is, he is no diplomat. Whatever Davis is, he is no cool-headed negotiator, whatever Fox is, he is no philanthropist and whatever Hammond is, he is no Keynesian. Indeed Hammond is a throwback to the sado-monetarism of the early days of Thatcherism, before Maggie realised she had to open the public purse to throw money at the apparatus of state oppression if she was ever to destroy trade union influence and tighten her grip on power.
Can May hold it together? I think not. For all the gushing about her being Britain’s second woman PM, her general demeanour reminded me of a quip about another PM: “His smile was like a silverplate on a coffin.” The PM was Robert Peel. And, like Peel, whatever May is, she is no upholder of civil liberties. You have been warned.

Big Jock
2 years ago

Look Hammond’s empty,dead and cold eyes, and that is your future on one side. Look at Nicola with the Brain family and able to walk with ordinary peope in the streets. Warm and genuine a real human with emotions. We have a choice to become zombies fed on scraps or human beings with purpose and humanity.

Steven Milne
2 years ago

w.b.robertson
2 years ago

don`t be so quick with forecasts of doom. Mrs May, rowing her boat backwards, might well promote a more moderate line. Every ruling Establishment clique which smell danger, normally panic and throw the peasants a few crusts. Just sufficient to buy time and save their necks. (although back in 1789 the French Roi did not move quick enough.)

Iain Ross
2 years ago

And yet I still have to sit with people at my work who just think this is a big joke but still can’t see past being joined at the hip with mother England and spouting the lines such as “I’m as Scottish as anybody but how would we afford it”.

It would appear the ‘Power of the Dark Side’ or the ‘Scottish Cringe’ is alive and well. I really struggle to understand what goes on is some people’s minds. The more they are dished out the more they seem to want.

My main frustration is not that they have different views to me but that they point blankly refuse to consider alternatives.

If we can not win a referendum after all of this and what is to come then I don’t think there is a Scotland and I am not sure I want to keep living here surrounded by all these naysayers.

Aileen Mitchell Stewart
2 years ago

You can only fight ignorance with facts. Get together some proper, preferably from a reputable, unbiased source, and next time they say we can’t afford independence slap in down in front of them. Then they’ll have another equally daft excuse (because that’s what these notions are, excuses to cover fear and ignorance) so you’ll ha e to assemble another bunch of facts & figures to counter the excuse. Repeat ad nauseam, or till Indy2, whichever comes first. But sheer hard facts are the only way we’ll convert the doubters. They think it’s all about Braveheart, and shedding a wee tear whenever you here ‘My Ain Folk’ (No? Just me then? Oops!). We need to start showing people who talk about being “Scottish, but … ” that independence is a rational, not an emotional goal.

Broadbield
2 years ago

To paraphrase Bob Monkhouse: Everyone laughed when Boris said he didn’t want to be pm; well, they’re not laughing now.” Now that’s he’s Foreign Secretary, a dilettante buffoon with no staying power. What a sick joke.

May, might sound like she’s got a social conscience with stuff about “burning injustice” etc but remember Thatcher with her St. Francis’s prayer? Where there is harmony may we bring discord, where there is truth, may we bring error, where there is hope, may we bring despair….

Oh, just a minute did I get that the wrong way round? No, don’t think so, as it turned out.

Bella Caledonia Editor
2 years ago

Steven Milne
2 years ago

The name of this site would suggest that it is a celebration of Scottishness but the content does not reflect this, rather a hatred of Britishness.

There is much anger and resentment directed at Tories, UKIP and any Scot who also identifies as British. This hatred seems exclusively directed at Britishness and, for example, there is no anger and resentment directed at Islamic State or Irish Republican terrorists.

Would it not make sense to change the name of the site to Turpis Brittania?

Pilrig
2 years ago

Aileen Mitchell Stewart
2 years ago

I don’t hate Britishness. But I don’t like it, either. What’s to like? What exactly is ‘Britishness’? In order to hate something you have to have some sense of what it is. And what is it beyond a factual statement? You can’t hate that. Is it something you feel? You feel you are British, identify with that and it becomes part of your persona. Is that it? But to,haye that you’d surely have to,have some sense of what that might feel like.

I don’t feel in the least tiny bit ‘British’, whatever it is. I know what it is to feel Scottish, to feel an affinity with a certain way of thinking about the world, a strong attachment to the land in Scotland, an enjoyment of the Scots language, and a sorrow that it is almost dead, a pride in the Scottish ‘soul’, for want of a better term, Scottish morality is part of it, the Scots’ passionate belief in fairness is another, along with a willingness to stand up for it, all that and more is part of how I feel Scottish. Yes, Mr. Milne, it’s a highly personal and maybe not provable set of feelings and beliefs and other people’s might be quite different. But the point is that like a lot of Scots I do feel Scottish but have no feelings at all about ‘Britishness’. In fact whenever I try to think what such a feeling might be like what inevitably and powerfully comes up is southern Englishness. I’m sure I’m not alone in finding it impossible to separate the two.

So if you are suggesting that we hate the sort of attitudes and beliefs we take to be typical of the southern English, you might be loser to the mark, though ‘hate’ is a strong, and quite wrong, word. If we dislike: the tendency to try to patronise Scots, and alternately to romanticise and then try to minimise Scotland, to take no interest in things Scottish, in fact to display a profound depth of ignorance when discussing Scotland and anything Scottish; regarding Scotland as England’s oldest colony and regarding any desire by Scots for independence as the natives getting uppity and ungrateful; the constant to attempt to denigrate Scots and Scottish interests whenever possible while claiming it’s the Scots who are being aggressive or even racist; the taking of puerile delight in deliberately muscling in on any internet site or other online place where independence is discussed and try to score pathetic points or provoke annoyance, if you’re saying we hate all that you’d be quite wrong. We find it irritating, ignorant, wearisome, and mostly beneath our dignity to even acknowledge. (I’m only responding now because I’m bored.)

Those who feel Scottish tend to regard all that rather like one of our midgies that it’s annoying to have to swat. And why would we want to associate ourselves with midgies?

Chris Clark
2 years ago

What nonsense. You don’t mention the House of Lords which is the largest by membership unelected legistlative organ in the world. You don’t list the second class status given to our Parliament or the continual snide belittling of the Scots by the English. Of course, I could go on. Get real. Read Andy Wightman or Tom Nairn. Educate yourself. We need our freedom and as soon as possible.